him; how with the father who was "French of Picardy"--the white blood
being a pride to Rafael--he himself, yes, and the father also, for he
had married a "_sauvagess_," a Huron woman--had belonged to the tribe
and were accounted Hurons; I considered Rafael's proud carriage, his
classic head and carved features, his Indian austerity and his French
mirth weaving in and out of each other; I considered the fineness and
the fearlessness of his spirit, which long hardship had not blunted; I
reflected on the tales he had told me of a youth forced to fight the
world. "_On a vu de le misère_," Rafael had said: "One has seen
trouble"--shaking his head, with lines of old suffering emerging from
the reserve of his face like writing in sympathetic ink under heat. And
I marvelled that through such fire, out of such neglect, out of lack of
opportunity and bitter pressure, the steel of a character should have
been tempered to gentleness and bravery and honor.

For it was a very splendid old boy who was cooking for me and greasing
my boots and going off with me after moose; putting his keen ancestral
instincts of three thousand years at my service for three dollars a
day. With my chances would not Rafael have been a bigger man than I? At
least never could I achieve that grand air, that austere repose of
manner which he had got with no trouble at all from a line of unwashed
but courageous old bucks, thinking highly of themselves for untold
generations, and killing everything which thought otherwise. I laughed
all but aloud at this spot in my meditations, as a special vision of
Rafael rose suddenly, when he had stated, on a day, his views of the
great war. He talked plain language about the Germans. He specified why
he considered the nation a disgrace to humanity--most people, not
German, agree on the thesis and its specifications. Then the fire of his
ancient fighting blood blazed through restraint of manner. He drew up
his tall figure, slim-waisted, deep-shouldered, every inch sliding